Peru, flooding and tourism

You read about it first on IKN in this post last week, "Peru's tourist industry facing crisis."

Now you read about it in The Economist. (although their piece does say very silly things like "Lake Titicaca is close to overflowing", proving that the author has no idea about the area....go to Desaguadero, dumbass....or at least work out what the word means, mono-linguist).

Just sayin'.

Peru's tourism industry facing crisis

I picked a hi-resolution photo, so if you were planning to go this year you
can now click on the above, download and tell your
friends how great is was without leaving the beach.

After the rains comes the perfect storm. The flooding and chewing-to-bits of the rail connection to Machu Picchu has isolated Peru's jewel in the tourist track crown and according to latest reports the citadel will be inaccessible for the next seven to eight weeks. However, the new accesses that will open are footpath only, because they're now talking about five months to get the rail line back up and running.

This is not just a problem for Cusco. The two days (or so) that tourists spend at Machu Picchu form part of a whole circuit that runs typically for two weeks and shuffles coachloads of gringos from Lima-to-Paracas-to-Arequipa-to-Lake-Titicaca-to-Cusco and then flies them back to Lima. So with the main event now cancelled, tourists are turning their back on the whole deal because going all the way to Peru without getting to see the star attraction just doesn't appeal the same way. The result? In the last few days, foreign tour operators have cancelled no less than 50% of all their tour packages, leaving hotels all along the circuit facing empty rooms and tour guides with nobody to tour.

A quick ciggypack calc done yesterday by your humble scribe and a couple of pals who do numbers better than himself put the loss at about 0.5% of projected country GDP. This isn't a disaster in itself, but that money isn't part of the big purse run by the government; it's cash that goes directly to the populations of some of the poorest parts of the country and supports a whole range of service and ancilliary industries (the families that rely on market stalls selling trinkets to people wearing backpacks are in for the tough time, for example). All this on top of flooding that has cost the subsistence farmers of the high plains to the tune of eight million soles and wiped out crops for around 20,000 farmers, according to the Agro ministry.

Moral of this story: Don't build your railtrack next to a river in the high Andes.

Butch, Sundance, Bolivia, Tourism

The Real Butch Cassidy
(photo not taken in 1969)

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky is one of my fave Bolivian commentators, as she's always on the lookout for the angle that explains more about her subject country. She has a new article out in Time Magazine about the nascent tourist attraction being built up around the scene of Butch Cassidy's and Sundance Kid's death in Bolivia that's well worth a read (and kudos to Pan American Silver (PAAS) for helping the initiative).

Here's the link, go see.
c

Peru: Travelling without moving

Bill Weinberg in World War 4 Report has written an article about travelling on buses in Peru. Called 'Peru: bus travel reveals stark class divisions' it's an interesting first-hand account of experiences your author has also had. A good account of how things really are away from plastic-coated Peru-For-Export and well worth your time. Here's an extract from when he left the locals' service and got on a tourist-class vehicle:

The tourist bus may have been more secure, but it was completely insulated from local realities. The sunburned jet-setters were really paying a whole lot more for just one thing: to avoid experiencing Peru. The usual scenes of oppressive poverty—little villages of desperate campesinos scratching the dirt, improvised houses of mud and balsa with no indoor plumbing—went by like the towns far below for an air traveller. We were in an air-conditioned land-ship designed to deliver tourists from one air-conditioned resort to another. The sights that the promotional tourism video boasted between the atrocious movies—Machu Picchu, etc.—were just commodified spectacles, completely divorced from any cultural context.

Continues here

Machu Picchu is not real

it's that photo again. Click to enlarge, it's a hi-res and
gets very big....you can almost see the hotdog stands

Best-selling travel writer Bill Bryson has a new book out called "The Road Less Travelled" which checks out a thousand places to visit that are off the beaten track. But part of the book is devoted to the world's five most over-rated tourist sites and Peru's Machu Picchu makes that list. Here's the UK Times' report on that section of his book (note £100= U$160, more or less).

MACHU PICCHU, PERU

THE BUILD-UP There’s no doubt that Machu Picchu holds its own as a premier tourist stop. Possibly South America’s most-promoted destination, it has held the top spot for travellers eager to see the majesty of the Inca for several years.

THE REALITY The journey to Machu Picchu is not pleasant, and the entrance fee has risen to more than £25. Add to this the round-trip train fare to the village at the foot of the mountain (the most common means of transport from Cusco), the bus fare from here to the site, plus the food and water you’ll need during the day, and you’re well above £100 before you’ve even set foot in Machu Picchu. . .that is if you fall within the number of people allowed in daily.

And y'know what? It's true. For one thing Machu Picchu is over-rated as a destination. For another, there are other places less well-known that are steeped in just as much history in the ex-Inca (and pre-Inca) regions of the Andes. Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia all have their historical jewels to offer. Machu Picchu is the touchstone place and people travelling 10,000km or more to get to South America feel obliged to make it a stop-off on their way. Yes, the place is well-tended. Yes, the tour guides are very knowledgeable and professional. Yes, it's a tourist trap, and an expensive captive-audience one at that. Want to pay Tokyo prices for mediocre goods and services in the middle of smalltown South America? Aguas Calientes is the place for you. Want to buy a genuine Inca ballpoint pen? Cuzco's Plaza de Armas awaits with open arms. Machu Picchu (and Cusco for that matter) is another great location covering itself with plastic and pretending to be something it isn't. Man, gimme La Paz (Bolivia), Medellín (Colombia), Tucumán (Argentina) or Asunción (Paraguay) any day of the week. Real places, beautiful places, places not trying to fake themselves to conform to an image created for outsiders.

So how's the tourist high season going in Argentina

Take one large dose of swine flu panic, flavour with a dash of financial crisis. mix in rising unemployment and understated inflation and let's see what we have via this Spanish language report in Critica:

Mar Del Plata (Argentina's most popular coastal resort): Hotels with few reservations and low occupation rate. Buscompanies laying off drivers and subcontracted vehicles. Unlikely to break 50% occupancy rates through the winter break season. Restaurants offering cut price menus.

Bariloche (main ski resort): 50% fewer charter flights arriving from Brazil. Unofficial figures have hotel occupancy at 20%, despite good snowfalls and ski conditions.

La Leñas (number two ski resort): Foreign arrivals down 30%. More exclusive than Bariloche, officials insist that occupancies are at 95%.

Iguazú (the famous waterfalls on the Brazil border): 65% occupancies though "yesterday at 90%". People less worried about swine flu in this tropical zone. Most tourists arriving in own vehicles (approx 16 hours by road from Buenos Aires).

Córdoba (central city, popular for short breaks): "Apocalyptic panorama". "The season is lost. For us July is always the best month of the year but the (swine) flu has hit us hard, people aren't getting together and we have a lot of cancellations" says Jorge Piñiero, the president of the association of bars. Worst affected businesses are school outing and package tours.

Northwest Argentina (tourist route area from Catamarca through Tucuman, Salta and Jujuy): Occupancy rates at 66%, 15% lower than the norm. Local tourism suit Fernando García Soria says "The percentages aren't bad, considering the difficult context."

Peru: Buy one tour of Cuzco, get one free

In the world of Twobreakfasts, news like this is ignored. It doesn't fit with his version of reality, y'see. The key July and August months for tourism in Peru are turning out to be an unmitigated disaster, with tourist-dependent cities such as Cuzco (or Cusco if you prefer to spell it the imperialist way) suddenly waking up to a bit of cold reality. Here's the start of this report, translated by your humble scribe:

Despite being in high season, the president of the Society of Hotels of Peru (SHP), José Koechlin, states that in various five star hotels in the country are offering tariff discounts of between 30% and 50%.

"It is a measure of the crisis, both here and abroad, that means less tourists arriving to the Peru market as well as the (lack of) capacity for Peruvians to afford the five-star market" the director told a local newspaper.

Do what with tourism???????

This one isn't really LatAm, but it is Spanish language, it is politics and it's definitely stuff like that. Spanish PM Zapatero (he of the crummy suits) was speaking at a press conference today after meeting Russian President Medvedev. The issue in question was bilateral tourism and Zapatero said

"We have made an agreement to stimulate, to benefit, to f**k, to help this tourism."

Don't believe me? Ok, here's the Youtube.

The exact words are (in the last 10 seconds of this 27 second video):

"Hemos hecho un acuerdo para estimular, para favorecer, para follar para apoyar ese turismo."

For those who suffer under the Castilian challenge, the offending word is "follar" (pron: fo' yar). Sure it's a blooper, but it's a damn good one. Just a pity the new US Prez is such a good speaker. Will we begin to miss those dubyaisms after a while?

Thanks for the headsup, UL.

Peru: A billion here, a billion there..........

.....and pretty soon we're talking about serious money.

Remember this chart from a few days ago that shows Peru's rapidly shrinking GDP forecasts for 2009?


Well, add another notch down to that. On top of the $4Bn or so that lower metals prices are going to lop off exports, on top of the wholesale job layoffs in its industry, on top of the sharp downturn in foreign remittances at make up 2.5% of Peru's GDP, on top of the indefinitely deferred capex projects we'll be hearing about soon...on top of all that, Peru's tourist industry (as predicted) is crumbling. This report in El Comercio today has the head honcho of the Society of Hotels of Peru (SHP) as saying bookings and reservations are down 30% (yep, thirty) from 2008 levels. To get that into context, tourism in Peru was an U$8.7Bn business last year and accounted for 7.5% of country GDP.

Also, it's worth remembering that unlike mining, tourism is a very labour-intensive industry (waiters, tour guides, hotel receptionists, drivers, park keepers etc etc) and this kind of downturn will be felt keenly in the pockets of José Publico (in fact, here's a little link that explains tourism provides one in every 14.6 jobs in Peru right now).

But all this doesn't count, because Twobreakfasts said Peru is going to grow 6.5% next year and thus it shall come to pass. Or was that 6%? Or maybe it was 5%? That's what comes of pinning your growth prospects on a birdshit museum, y'see.